This Christmas, we’re serving up holiday platters for the many moods and sonic flavors of the season. We get down to some very merry Chicano rockabilly from Los Straitjackets; gather around the fire with French fiddlers in snowy Maine; imbibe “Sugar Rum Cherry” concocted by Duke Ellington; dream of a white Christmas a laBooker T. & the MGs, and hear the tale of Miles Davis‘ “Blue X-mas” from jazz composer Bob Dorough. Plus, cool Yuletide exotica from Esquivel, joyous free jazz from Rahsaan Roland Kirk and ring shouting for a New Year from the Georgia Sea Island Singers.

HERB JEFFRIES

March 17th, 2004

The music and life of Herb Jeffries, lead singer and last surviving member of Duke Ellington’s legendary “Blanton-Webster” band of the early 1940s. Jeffries, called “the Bronze Buckaroo,” was also the first black star of a cowboy movie; his theme song, “I’m a Happy Cowboy” comes from the 1938 western “Harlem on the Prairie.”